


Resolutions

by cirque_de_reves (orphan_account)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Cas is dead but he comes back both canonically and in this fic pls don't worry, Castiel and Dean Winchester Need to Use Their Words, Clueless Cas (tm), Dean likes to write poetry I guess?, Dean pining over Cas, Destiel Angst, Destiel Fluff, M/M, Writer Dean But Not Like AU Just...Yes, sad-ish but happy ending again those are fun, spoilers for season 12 finale!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-28 00:01:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13259358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/cirque_de_reves
Summary: Dean can't deal with Cas's death. He's tried everything, banged his head against the wall trying to forget, and nothing works...Until he picks up a pencil.(In which Dean writes poetry about Cas, because he can't do anything else/In which Cas comes back and finds it, wherein we watch the real disaster unfold...)





	Resolutions

**Author's Note:**

> This starts off very depressingly but I think (I hope) it's worth it. I actually wrote this over the summer and just recently rediscovered it and made some changes (so if the style is hard to nail down or slightly controversial it's only because I tend to hate all past forms of my own writing.) I hope that even though this prompt is outdated it's still enjoyable! And as always, feel free to comment any thoughts :-)

Dean does everything he can to get away from it. He can’t take himself anywhere but abstract places, locations no one would be able to draw out, like desperation and hopelessness. They feel like subway stops, but he’s the only rider. No music or people or monsters to distract him, just the solemn whir of the wheels on the tracks and the subtle fact that he has no clue where he’s headed.

He drinks a lot. His hand feels heavy whenever he lifts its contents to his lips, but then again, his whole body is heavy. And hard like tree-bark, and untouchable. He can’t bring himself to even try (or resort to -) flirting with pretty, lean barflies. He thinks of their hands and then he thinks of Cas’s hands and then he wants to die, so he doesn’t even try.

And here before he thought he was too tough and iced over for anything to get to him, that he’d successfully blanketed himself in a forcefield of grey cinder-blocks that no amount of gut-wrenching loss could penetrate. He never even considered _this_. This is something else, a different kind of hurt entirely. It doesn’t stab through the brick like daggers, it seeps through the mortar like a ghost. And he thought he had it built so thick, goddammit.

He wants to hunt but he can’t make the effort to get up and check for cases. Even if he did go, he knows what would happen. He’d let some monster take him out with his gun still fully loaded.

He regrets not telling Cas how much he meant. Sure, there were times when he praised him and called him _brother_ even though Dean wants so much more from him than that, and times when he didn’t even have to, when Cas could read his mind even though there was hardly any angel juice left in him to do it. They knew each other. Dean never questioned it. It was simple as that.

He never saw this coming. He’s always worried too much, and still he never connected the dots between _life is short_ and _I love you._

He wishes he could go back. To one of those moments he and Cas were alone together, and everything was there, written in the dust in the silence. He’d freeze the picture and never leave. He’d watch those smartass blue eyes for forever and longer and he’d kiss those lips and he’d try not to sob. It would feel so good.

Absentmindedly, Dean reaches for something in front of him, but it’s just empty air, reminding him that he’s the only passenger on this train. Sam feels it too, but no one will ever know how painful it is for Dean. Sam doesn’t even have a ticket. No one ever loved Castiel the way Dean does, and Dean hadn’t ever loved himself before Cas made him feel worthy of it. At the very least he could’ve thanked him.

But he’s dead now. He won’t even hear the prayers, let alone answer them. It doesn’t make a difference how many times Dean crashes to his knees on the floor of his room and begs for Cas to be there on the bed when he turns back around, in some lazy cross-legged position, sketching the anatomy of the bumblebee in the air with his forefinger and using his trenchcoat as a pillow. Dean would listen to whatever he said like it was gospel or the secrets of life. Dean would lean on his elbow next to the angel and watch his eyes glitter while he talked about things he loved, and the way his hair swished when he breathed, and how perfect his mouth was, and how all the physicality and allure was still light-years away from the amount of beauty inside and the guilt that shouldn’t have been there. He loves him, he loved him, he loves him, he hates him for leaving.

He’s forced himself to pore over the story so many times. How could Cas have been that ignorant, to face away from the devil? A stab to the back is not a gallant death in the hunting universe. A stab to the back means naivety and negligence and youth. And Cas was billions of years old, dammit. Too old to be that forgetful.

Remembering the way Cas looked at Dean milliseconds before he died is too much, so he doesn’t. It’s clear that he doesn’t do much at all anymore.

So –  Dean takes it one day at a time, like he’s tiptoeing. There are land-mines everywhere.

What else would he do? He’d take it no days at a time if he could, which is to say he’d just kill himself outright if he thought it’d provide any escape at all. But he’d be in Heaven, locked in a box of foul paradise, with reminders of his angel everywhere.

But it’s not like there aren’t any here, either. He finds parts of Cas in every nook and cranny the bunker has, little left-behind microcosms of who he was. A book he was reading and had left dog-eared and spread-eagled on a side-table in the library; a beat-up old flip phone, memory overflowing with urgent voicemails from Dean and Sam and Mary and whoever else; and just the other day, there was his trenchcoat, all folded up like a memorial flag on the dining room table, as dead as Cas himself and still breathtaking, like a punch to the stomach.

He has the energy to cry, once, and the tears feel sticky on his face, like price tag adhesive. He rocks back and forth and scratches at his eyes and can’t not think about how he’s alive and Castiel isn’t, and how the grotesque puzzle-piece chunks surround him but he doesn’t know how to put them together, doesn’t know how to bring him back.

When it first happened, Sam always wanted to talk about it, like a fucking twelve-year-old girl, and he was frustrated, per usual, when Dean adamantly refused to even look him in the eyes. So, he kept his distance, at least for a while. It’s not until he’s forced to interject that he decides he can’t leave Dean alone with himself, which is when he finds him unconscious on the carpet in the library, Cas’s same book curled in his fingers. Collapsed out of exhaustion, WebMD had cited, piecing together symptoms with quarantining chopstick fingers, sterility replacing faith. Weird, because Dean sleeps all the time now. It’s so draining to be alive.

After that, Sam always has one eye open, and it’s always on Dean. Dean hates it. He’s so broken it feels contagious. On his own he’s a curse. He perspires liquid grief, the same way a poison-dart frog sweats murder.

Sammy tells him it’s nonsense, but Dean just stares at the wall and wrings his hands.

We need to find you a coping strategy, Sam says, softly, because he knows somehow that Dean _loved_ Cas – what an ugly word love is – knows that he always did. Why don’t you write about it?

Dean looks at him then like he’s an alien, because he sounds pretentiously shrink-like, and because Dean barely scraped by with a GED and he’s killed more times than he has held a pencil between his fingers.

But later that night he tries it anyway, because he’s lost everything and if he doesn’t distract himself he won’t be able to forget it. He doesn’t know what he expects; writing is no amnesia, but maybe it’ll enable him to get his shit together in a way that isn’t chasing painkillers with vodka and drowning himself in the sink.

He’s surprised by how easily the words flow out of him. He’s never been a writer, but he’s not sure it qualifies as writing when he’s just trying to survive.

He gulps down his whiskey and holds the point to the paper so rigidly it tears. The sound is cathartic. He scrawls until the blank spaces are cloudy with words, and falls asleep again, his head on the desk and the pencil still in his hand like a blanket.

***

After Cas comes back, Dean is the most relieved and the angriest he’s ever been. What was previously emptiness swells with something equal parts alleviation and fury. When he sees the angel, it’s less than one glance before he has a blade to his throat and holy water on his hairline. What kind of sick demon would taunt him like this, bring the illusion of hope into his home and poison him all over again, what kind of hellbound creature would bring Cas back just to see the look on Dean’s face?

It’s even worse when it turns out to really be Cas.

Dean doesn’t let himself wonder why, but he gives him a wide berth. He’s still recovering. He still needs time.

Even so, the orchestra of pencil scratches goes mute for a while. Abandoned, they collect dust where they lay all over the bunker, cluttered into corners in places Dean had written them out of desperation and knee-weakening nostalgia. The poems endure the same awkward radio-silence as the rest of them do, inflamed with confessions like anchored balloons. They ache with an instinctive desire to be unleashed. They’ve never been the soaring-over-the-rainbows type, but they can jump fences, and they can muffle heartache. How else would Dean have stayed alive?

Even so, even personified, they can’t keep themselves out of the slums of neglect. They need hands to scoop them out and coddle them until their little wings start budding again, like cherry trees in spring.

Cas stumbles across them purely on accident, and they’re his only friend for a long time.

***

He finds Dean in the kitchen, a mug of something in his hand and discolored stubble clinging to his jaw, his eyes focused on the tile floor unblinkingly. He resembles a rabid animal.

Cas stands there for a moment and tries to contemplate his options, but instead spends it looking at the way the light distributes itself on and around Dean’s figure. It brings him to dwell on anatomy, and then geometry, and then he catches himself zoning out, so he shakes the universe from his conscience.

Because he has more urgent things to do.

He tries not to flex his fingers too much, because he’ll crumple the paper, and that might render the content illegible, and that’s the last thing in the world he would want.

He hopes to whatever’s still out there, be it some ragtag desk-duty angel or God, that his impending confrontation will help him to figure out how he feels and what it makes him.

It’s just his luck that Dean chooses that instant to recognize his presence. He nods his head up and down slowly, and then they just look at each other.

“Hello, Dean.”

Dean sips at what is assumably coffee, and shrugs.

“Can we talk?” The paper rustles between Cas’s fingers.

“Sure, Cas. Fire away.” There’s an offshoot of sarcasm in Dean’s tone, but he shuffles his feet awkwardly and Cas knows it’s probably just a cover for that deer-caught-in-the-headlights feeling. He’s been ignoring Cas for almost a week, and if what Cas is about to do goes the way he has it planned, that’s going to change.

And because he doesn’t know how to start, he just holds the paper up next to his head and opens his mouth and waits for words to come. “Dean, what is this?”

The hunter’s eyes widen. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Cas sighs and cocks his head to the side. “Don’t play dumb with me, Dean. Pop culture may fly over my head more often than not, but I’m not incompetent. I can read between the lines when it’s called for, and you can’t possibly look me in the eyes and tell me you don’t know what this is.”

A wave of quiet anger washes over Dean’s face, stripping it of color. When the tempestuous tide retreats, Cas can see that all that’s left on Dean’s face is guilty helplessness. “That’s really none of your business.”

“Your feelings towards me will always be my business.”

“Really, Cas? Because I don’t think that’s how it works! What did you do, ransack my bedroom? Is that your sick way of getting me to pay attention to you?” He grabs for the paper, but Cas jerks his arm back at the last second. Dean’s voice is eerily low. “You know something? I prayed to you, for you, every day. I didn’t ask for _this_.” The little green lighthouses in Dean’s eye sockets flicker out, if they were ever there at all – suddenly Cas isn’t so sure – and his expression curdles, dead and old and unfeeling.

Cas almost absorbs the blow. He’s nearly able to ignore it, but his psyche is more sensitive than he anticipated, and he didn’t prepare for this kind of response. He stumbles back and it feels like Dean’s socked the air right out of his lungs, so when he speaks it’s wheezy and unnatural and it sounds diseased. “You expect me to come back and just be your bitch? It’s like I never left. _Nothing has changed_.”

“You really believe that?” Dean asks. “You fucking tore me apart, Cas.”

He had anticipated this moment being miraculous, something akin to the New Testament in all its glories, even a Bible of its own.

Deciding finally to speak, he treads carefully; Dean is broken glass... “When I found the first one – this one – I thought you had left it there for me to see. I knew your handwriting. I don’t…I didn’t think it would matter. Just a grocery or to-do list, maybe. I was stupid. And then I read it, and at first I didn’t get that – that it was me – but, really, Dean-” He brings the loose-leaf down in front of his face and quotes it. “‘Wings of shadow so bright they saved me.’ I don’t mean to be selfish, but who else could that even be referring to? You don’t have to pretend, Dean. I’m not mad and I don’t want you to get defensive. I just want to talk.”

“ _I_ don’t.”

“You’re going to have to, because I can’t live like this,” Cas says. He’s not sure, but he thinks that when Dean turned away from him just now he could see tears shining in his eyes.

“You died like it,” Dean says. “You say nothing’s changed.”

Cas’s hand goes limp. The paper floats down to the floor, unburdened by his touch.

Dean folds his arms. “What is there to talk about? I wrote some crappy free verse because I was torn up about you getting _stabbed to death._ And you’re here now, freshly un-stabbed and healthy, and that tacky shit doesn’t serve a purpose anymore.” He runs a hand through his hair. He looks like a mad scientist. “I thought we were supposed to be getting past this? I can’t do jack until I get over you, and you’re not letting that happen!” His eyebrows shoot up, and foolishly, he continues. “With your…your cluelessness, and the senseless optimism, and c’mon, the fact that you still waltz around in that goddamn trenchcoat – if you can’t live here, maybe it’s for the best. Maybe I was just starting to get you out of my head. Maybe I have no one else to blame…”

It’s too hard to process what Dean just said, so Cas gulps and taps his foot against the linoleum. “I don’t – that’s the most you’ve said to me since I came back.”

“But who’s counting…” Dean mumbles breathily. He sets his mug on the island behind him and keeps his gaze low.

Cas throws up his hands. “I thought we had gotten over this years ago, Dean, I consider you my equal now, and my closest friend…”

Dean winces.

“Don’t do that to me, Cas, don’t you do that…You know I want more than that…”

All of a sudden Dean’s right in front of him and Cas doesn’t know how he got there, but now that they’re sharing the same breath it’s become abruptly _real_ , too real.

“…A responsibility, a resolution…I…what?” He tries to avoid eye contact, but Dean gently places two fingers underneath his jaw and tilts his chin up, and there’s nowhere else to look.

“Writing was me scrambling to find some way to get you out of my system, but God be damned if I didn’t learn that you can’t be replaced with prose and scratch paper,” Dean says, and exhales shallowly. “You’re fucking irreplaceable. I need you. Damn, Cas, I need you more than I’ve ever needed anything in my life.”

Cas wonders how something can feel so dreamlike when he’s never had one, when Dean’s touch on his shoulders and face is vivid and alive and crackling with electricity. Dreams don’t _do_ that.

He shudders, and Dean talks again.

“I just – did you really not know? I can’t even admit it to myself, but there’s no getting around it – I can’t avoid you when you’re the only person I feel sane with, not when I miss you so much I can’t handle it. And then I thought I could stay away, keep myself from getting hurt, but I just – dammit, Cas, I can’t help myself when it comes to you, and it doesn’t matter if you feel the same way or if you’re even able to, because I don’t think this is gonna go away.” His voice wavers, and Cas can hear his heartbeat, and it strikes him like lightning, just as wild and illuminating. “I barely remember what it feels like, but I’m pretty sure I love you.”

“You love me.” Cas repeats. He hardly believes it.

 “Yeah,” Dean says. “For what it’s worth, I think I do.” Teardrops threaten his perfect eyelashes and frustration purses his lips, and Cas can’t even imagine.

He can only be sorry.

Cas hooks his hand behind Dean’s ear, strokes his cheek lightly with his thumb. “For what it’s worth, I’ve loved you for some time now.” Dean leans into the touch and closes his eyes. “It seems we’ve struck quite the codependent relationship.”

“Then I guess we’d better stick together,” Dean says, blissful relief changing his face like the sun rising through a kaleidoscope, smiling wearily. It’s miles away from the one Cas fell for, to the point that it almost seems like he’s forgotten how – and if there’s anything he’s really learned, time eludes them, but is it not better to hold crippled belief in your hands than none at all?

And what better home-coming gift than a second chance?

“I’d like nothing more.” He stares at his lips. He can’t _not_.

Dean’s eyes sparkle from the inside, like stars. “You never told me if you liked them.”

“Liked what?”

“The poems…”

Cas grins crazily. Finally, he gets to make his point. “I liked them very much,” he says. “They gave me hope.”

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry you didn't really get a good glimpse at any actual poetry, I'm not sure if I trust my skills in that arena enough to put them on this website. Thanks for reading!!! :-)


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